


helplessly hoping

by orphan_account



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 4x09 through 4x13, Fix-It, Multi, Past Relationship(s), also no one dies, platonic alice/quentin where they don't get back together, so alice has a different character arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24672472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Alice knows what’s happening before Q tells Penny to take her away, before his hand slips behind his back, before the telltale glow of magic begins to stitch together a broken mirror. She knows before Everett appears, before the very first bottle is sent into the Seam. She knows before they step into the Mirror Realm that Quentin Coldwater will fix anything, even and especially if it means cannibalizing himself.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater & Alice Quinn
Kudos: 10





	helplessly hoping

_They are one person /_

She remembers a time when the Mirror World didn’t make her skin crawl. She’s not sure she wants to go back to that time—not when _that_ Alice is looking back at her with an infuriating smirk that even penetrates glass. But there’s more at stake than her own ego right now, so she rests her hand on the cool metal of the door’s heavy handle, and pulls.

“You’re right,” she admits. “I need your help.”

“Obviously,” not-Alice says. “If it weren’t for our experiments in the Mirror World, you never would have even made it this far.”

She saunters out of the cell, her nose pointed up haughtily and looking down at the other Alice. They’re exactly the same height, but Alice can’t help but feel much smaller.

“I’m not doing this because I want to, you know. I just need your help putting Harriett back together, and then, and then—” she falters.

“What, you’re going to bury me so deep inside you that I only come out when you need to push your friends away?” not-Alice asks. “Because that sounds like a great plan.”

“Listen, you ruined my life! You messed up everything with my friends, with magic, with the whole world—it’s better this way.” She angrily brushes the hair out of her face, stomping ahead. The sooner they’re done with this, the better.

Other-Alice keeps stride with her effortlessly. “Well, that does sound like something Alice would do. Ruin everything.”

“It is,” she bites back. “So I’m just—I’m just trying to do damage control, okay? It’s my job to keep you from fucking everything up again.”

“Oh, so I’m evil Alice now.”

Alice continues to march in stubborn silence.

“Or, are you evil Alice?”

“I’m really not in the mood for mind games right now.”

“No, wait, I got it. _We’re_ evil Alice.”

“You’re not even _real_ Alice,” she says. “You’re just a piece of my personality, some part of me that got refracted and warped from messing with the Mirror World.”

“But still a part of you,” Alice points out. “I always have been, even before you were a niffin. Before you even found Brakebills.”

Alice sighs, shaking the hair out of her face and turning to face herself. “What do you want to hear from me? That I’m useless without you? That I couldn’t even complete a single, stupid spell without working with the version of me that’s an evil, power-hungry megalomaniac?”

Alice rolls her eyes. “That ambition you’re so afraid of? That’s the same power that got you into Brakebills. It’s saved your ass multiple times, not to mention your _friends’_ asses. Now it’s about to save Harriet, and, if you’re very smart, it might save the whole fucking world, too.”

She shakes her head.

“I just want what’s best for us.”

“How do we know what that is?”

\---

_They are two alone /_

“Alice? It’s me. I’m… I’m back.”

Pulling away from Quentin’s lips, she’s not sure if she noticed exactly when present-Q had returned. Past-Quentin certainly hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t his Alice.

“Is… everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s okay.”

“Yeah,” she says again.

A beat of silence.

“Was that-?”

“Yeah,” Alice repeats. She wonders, then before she can stop herself, asks, “Did you-?”

“No—I mean—we did talk, but uh, she used a Memory Charm, so. It’s not a problem.” Quentin won’t look at her.

“What did you tell her?” Alice isn’t sure why she asks. If she’s expecting a confession or affirmation.

“Just, that,” Quentin rubs the back of his neck, looking somewhere she can’t see. “A lot happens. I kept it vague. Just... I told her you got hurt. We both did, you know?” He looks to her, searching for an answer.

“That’s an understatement,” she says. An almost-laugh escapes her anyways, and Quentin almost-smiles.

“She told me… that _this_ — _us_ —was the best thing that ever happened to her. That she was afraid of losing it.” He leaves the unsaid question hanging. _Do you feel the same way_?

 _Are you still her_?

“The other Quentin wasn’t nearly as eloquent,” she says. “He didn’t make it very far before suggesting we have sex on the table.”

“Wow. Sorry,” Quentin says, pinching the bridge of his nose apologetically. “That sounds like him. Me.”

Alice tries to smile reassuringly, but she’s sure it comes out closer to a grimace. “He didn’t realize I wasn’t her.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s fine. I’m not her, and you… you’re not him.”

Quentin opens his mouth as though to speak, then changes his mind. After a moment, he nods.

“Yeah. We’ve changed, haven’t we?”

“I was afraid of being only half a person,” she says. “When I was with you, I felt like you were the part of me that was missing. I thought you would make me whole.”

“What about now? Are you… a whole person?”

“I don’t know. But I know there’s more than enough of me to fill that hole now."

Quentin bends down to scoop up fragments of a cracked cup from the floor, magic gathering around his fingers. With a few delicate hand motions, the pieces begin to reassemble, seamlessly suturing themselves back into the shape of a mug. It’s beautiful. When she runs her hands over the smooth ceramic, it’s impossible to tell that it was once broken.

“You can’t be both the glue and the missing piece, Q,” she says, cradling the cup in her lap. “Remember that.”

\---

_They are three together_

Alice knows what’s happening before Q tells Penny to take her away, before his hand slips behind his back, before the telltale glow of magic begins to stitch together a broken mirror. She knows before Everett appears, before the very first bottle is sent into the Seam. She knows before they step into the Mirror Realm that Quentin Coldwater will fix anything, even and especially if it means cannibalizing himself.

It doesn’t take a highly-skilled phosphoromancer and former niffin to know this. But it helps.

It’s particularly helpful when it comes to knowing which of the Mirror Realms’ rules are pliant rather than rigid; that, for instance, fire or travel or mending might run countercurrent to the world’s magic, but refraction, the manipulation and distortion of light, could be, if not conjured, than _encouraged_ within a realm of mirrors. 

Not a true splitting of the self. Just echoes. Traces of Alice—the one who bargained with herself, the one who accused and accepted her, the one that passed a threshold uncertain if she’d be followed back—splintering and emerging as snapshots of herself.

Quentin brought pieces together. She scatters them.

Where light is currency, light is speed; and when the sparks begin to fly, they are on Quentin, pulling him away, a torrent of Alice-refractions, sweeping her, Quentin, and Penny up in their current and out the door, down the hallway, and to a forceful stop just outside the mirror they entered through. Alice sees her reflection in its glass. Two people—one whole, another a part of a larger piece.

“Was this for me?” she manages to ask.

“No,” Alice says, holding her head high. “It was for us.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading. i finished the s4 finale the other day and was left with thoughts i didn't know how to put into comprehensible words, so i put them into incomprehensible ones. also the song: https://youtu.be/kyquqw6GeXk


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